


For Reasons Wretched and Divine

by freyjawriter24



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, Wingfic, Wings, but it's nothing Bad. or Good for that matter. it's simply New, something has changed and they can't pinpoint what
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-07 21:08:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19858057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freyjawriter24/pseuds/freyjawriter24
Summary: “Angel,” Crowley said, one evening several months after the Apocalypse That Wasn’t.“Mmm?” Aziraphale finished reading the sentence he was on before looking up.“Do you feel... I dunno... different, somehow?”Aziraphale slowly closed the book in his hands. “Different how?”“Do you feel like something’s changed? Inside, like... maybe in relation to Heaven?”Aziraphale dragged his attention away from Crowley’s eyes and focused on his words instead. “In relation to Heaven? What on Earth do you mean?”***Crowley and Aziraphale realise that they're not connected to Heaven and Hell anymore. Their 'own side' is made manifest.





	For Reasons Wretched and Divine

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a line from 'Jackie and Wilson' by Hozier.
> 
> I know I haven't posted anything on here for a long time, but I've been utterly obsessed with these two idiots for the last month so I expect I'll be posting more random things about them sooner or later (not necessarily existing in the same universe as this piece). I hope you like it!
> 
> EDIT: There is now a podfic of this piece by the wonderful jekkiefan! Part One can be listened to [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ26ehdoKwQ), and Part Two can be listened to [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76sjoP9Aj5Q&t=10s).

There was a seismic shift somewhere, everywhere, that night, as everything went back to normal. The bookshop and the Bentley were restored, neither of them burned beyond repair. The M25 had lost any trace of fire, too, as had all of those who were on it when it happened. Those who had been lost were found; those who were no more were back.

With a lack of any sort of evidence when they woke up that morning, most people put anything odd they’d seen over the past few days down to a particularly bad and strange dream. Those who spoke about it, in person and online, eventually put it down to mass hallucination or false memory (or a weird crossover with a dream-like parallel universe). It must have been some sort of weird, tangible version of the Mandela Effect, the Berenstain Effect – a strange misremembering that united so many people, and yet couldn’t possibly have happened.

But there were aftershocks. The following evening, a nightingale found its way into central London, and finally sang in Berkeley Square. Earlier that afternoon, a sapling had withered quite suddenly into a brittle twig, in perhaps the last case of that kind of quasi-magical occurrence in Tadfield.

Elsewhere things looked shinier than they had before, or cleaner: rivers that were being dredged for rubbish brought up less than expected; an oil spill was found to have done less damage than feared, and was contained faster than anticipated; landfill sites somehow seemed emptier, or bigger, like perhaps some of the rubbish had been spirited away.

Researchers found new, unrecorded pods of whales, coalitions of cheetahs, crashes of rhinos, bands of gorillas. Leaders of countries at war, or at odds, woke up with just a little bit more peace in their hearts, a little bit more hopefulness. Crops in countries with starving populations seemed to be yielding more food than projected. Things were just a little bit better than they had been before.

There were other shifts, though, of a different origin to that first, unrelated to those aftershocks. Because God does not place dice with the universe; She plays an ineffable game, and sometimes, rarely, that necessitates interventions.

The two of them didn’t notice it happen, not really. They knew the world felt different, somehow, but they couldn’t pinpoint what. They put it down to a lingering sensation from all that had happened, but at some point along the way they realised it wasn’t leaving. Something had changed, something deep, deeper even than an antichrist ceasing to be so and dissolving Armageddon. Something... personal, somehow.

Crowley was the one who first said something. Aziraphale had been putting it down to unease at being in conflict with Heaven, but Crowley had been used to the discomfort of rebellion for a very, very long time.

“Angel,” he said, one evening several months after the Apocalypse That Wasn’t.

“Mmm?” Aziraphale finished reading the sentence he was on before looking up.

“Do you feel... I dunno... different, somehow?”

Aziraphale slowly closed the book in his hands. “Different how?”

“I dunno, I don’t...” Crowley shook his head, then stood up from the sofa in the back of the bookshop to pace, trying to identify exactly what he was trying to say.

Aziraphale watched him as he meandered around the space, weaving between shelves and stacks of books. Everything looked the same here, he thought, as it had done several years ago – over eleven years ago, now – that night when Crowley had convinced him to share godparenting duties over Warlock. Well, almost the same – Aziraphale had gone over every book in the shop in the weeks following the events at Tadfield, and although several new collections of children’s books had appeared, including one he suspected Adam Young had authored himself, nothing of any serious value, sentimental or otherwise, had vanished. Except for some of the wine he kept in the back room (which had been turned into bottles of a rather sweet kind of grape juice), everything was as it was.

And yet things _had_ changed. Things had changed across the universe, for a start, things had changed between Heaven and Hell. Aziraphale was trying not to think too hard about the philosophical implications of what he’d said at the air base, and he was pretty sure Gabriel and the others were doing the same.

And other things had changed, too – things between him and Crowley, things they hadn’t quite labelled yet, but that were definitely moving in a more forwards direction than they had been before. _That_ was what Aziraphale was thinking about when Crowley mentioned things felt different.

Eventually Crowley came and sat down on a chair again, the one at Aziraphale’s desk, and moved it so that they were face to face, less than a metre between them. The angular yet snake-like body leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his pensive gold eyes meeting Aziraphale’s gentle pale ones.

Crowley rarely wore his sunglasses at home anymore. By ‘home’, of course, he meant the bookshop, or anywhere where Aziraphale was around and they were otherwise alone. Right now they were discarded on a side table somewhere on the other side of the shop, and so Aziraphale was free to look directly into those beautiful gilt irises.

“Do you feel like something’s changed? Inside, like... maybe in relation to Heaven?”

Aziraphale dragged his attention away from Crowley’s eyes and focused on his words instead. “In relation to Heaven? What on Earth do you mean?”

Crowley threw himself back in the chair and looked towards the ceiling. “I... I don’t know how to explain it, I just... It feels like there’s something missing, or different, or something – something in relation to Hell. Like maybe there’s a connection there that’s... gone, somehow.”

Aziraphale reached over to the table beside him and put his book down, taking his glasses off and folding them neatly on top of it. Crowley swung his head back down onto his chest and watched him. There was a precision in what he was doing that Crowley knew meant he was about to say something that he was still coming up with the words to properly articulate. He waited.

“Well, I... I have been feeling _off_ , you know, since it happened. But I rather assumed that was just nerves, just the... the after effects of...” – he made some sort of vague gesture with his hands – “defying Heaven.”

Aziraphale had been careful not to say ‘defying God’ or anything to that effect, partly because he was hopeful that he hadn’t, and partly because he was making an active effort to try to put some distance between the concepts of ‘God’ and ‘Heaven’ in his mind. Something told him that perhaps God was really more a neutral party, one aligned with neither Heaven nor Hell, and possibly not with Earth, either.

“It might well be,” Crowley mused, still for a moment. “ _Or –_ ”

He leapt to his feet again and resumed pacing around the small area in the back of the shop. Aziraphale watched with interest, at the same time trying to feel for what it was that Crowley had suggested was missing. Had he _felt_ a tangible link to Heaven before? There must be one – that’s where his miracles came from, after all. But could he _feel_ it?

“ _Or_ ,” Crowley continued, nodding as his mind made sense of everything. “Perhaps we’ve been cut off.”

“Cut off?” Aziraphale gasped. He frowned, crinkles appearing in a scattering across his face as Crowley watched. “But, my dear fellow, they couldn’t possibly have... How?”

“I don’t know.” Crowley’s eyes had taken on that hint of devilish mischief that made Aziraphale nervous and thrilled in equal measure. “But we’re not really ‘of’ either of them now, are we? You’re not really of Heaven. I’m not really of Hell. We’re on our own side. Maybe that’s... real now.”

“Our own side?”

“Yeah. Like...” he searched for the right word, the right combination of meanings. Hellven. Heavell. _Aziraphley_. _Crowlaphale_. “An Aziraphale-Crowley combo. Earth-side. Neither Heaven nor Hell.”

They sat in silence for a while, each pondering this new possibility.

“How would we know?”

It was Aziraphale who broke the silence, and Crowley conceded it was a valid question. A vague feeling wasn’t exactly confirmation.

“No idea,” he had to eventually admit.

“We could ask.”

“ _Ask_?” Crowley scoffed. “Ask _who_ , angel?”

A tentative finger pointed towards the ceiling. “Her.”

Crowley was taken aback. Aziraphale had told him about the failed attempt to speak to God, the dismissive response from the Metatron. How was he expecting that route to go now that he’d effectively been cast out?

“Not through the official channels,” Aziraphale clarified, letting the words tumble out as he thought of them, not quite sure where he was going with this line of thought. “Not using the circle, I mean. Just... praying. Directly to God. She might not respond, of course, She hardly ever does, especially these days, but perhaps She might, oh I don’t know... send us a sign?”

He looked up and saw the scepticism on Crowley’s face. “Oh, no, you’re right, my dear, of course. I just wondered...” He took a steadying breath. “I just hoped that maybe She’d make an exception. That if this” – he gestured generally at the bookshop, at the two of them – “ _is_ all part of the Ineffable Plan, then perhaps She would talk to us. If we tried.”

In one swift, fluid motion, Crowley stepped over to Aziraphale’s sofa and folded himself down onto it, curling up into a comforting knot next to his angel, and reaching out to place a supportive hand on the other’s.

“We can always try,” he said gently, soothingly. “I... don’t think She’ll listen to me, I’ve tried before, but She might answer you. It’s always worth a try.”

“You’ve tried before?” Aziraphale’s voice was small and fragile, perilously close to sounding like he was crying. But he’d picked up on the detail Crowley hadn’t quite meant to share, and the demon had to restrain himself from cursing under his breath.

“I... yeah, I did.” Crowley’s eyes didn’t meet Aziraphale’s, instead focusing just a little too fiercely on the small circles of motion his thumb was making on the back of Aziraphale’s hand. “When... when I was trying to figure out where we should go. Alpha Centauri. I asked Her why She was doing this, why She was allowing Heaven and Hell to test the humans to destruction. She didn’t answer.”

She didn’t answer. She would never answer, not to Crowley’s questions. He’d learnt that a long time ago, when his questions sent him plummeting and burning and knowing that he could never be forgiven for that simple, innocent act.

“Perhaps She did.”

Crowley looked up to see Aziraphale’s eyes far off, glazed over as if looking at nothing.

“Perhaps She did, and you just didn’t realise. It seems She has a habit, you see, of letting people prove the answer themselves, rather than just giving it to them in as many words.” Aziraphale seemed to be gaining momentum now, a new strength coming back into his voice. “Some humans believe that’s why they don’t hear the Almighty anymore, because they’ve stopped learning how to _listen_. You asked why She was allowing this to happen, and then you set your mind to stopping it and She let it _not_ happen. She let you make your own decision on it, and that gave you your answer. She _wasn’t_ allowing it to happen, _you_ were part of the reason it didn’t.”

“Sounds like a bit of a cop-out to me.”

Aziraphale harrumphed. “Well, that may be. But it stands to reason that if we ask, and don’t get a verbal response, we might still be able to find out the answer. And the mere act of _asking_ might drive us to it.”

Crowley shrugged. “As I said, worth a try.”

A silence settled over the two of them again. The occasional sounds of late-night London traffic drifted in from outside, a soft background noise to the sound of their breathing and their beating hearts.

Neither had made a move to try praying yet. Crowley was trying very hard to _not_ think about God and talking to Her again. Aziraphale was strangely self-conscious of attempting it in front of Crowley. It wasn’t that he was embarrassed, per se – it was more that he was sympathetic, and his current worry was that Crowley might feel uncomfortable at the sight of an angel making a connection with God. Then a new worry came to him.

“Crowley, you don’t think that – even if we don’t use my circle – that Upstairs might be able to listen in?”

Crowley sucked in a long breath. “Maybe. Depends what kind of set-up they’ve got going on.”

“Oh dear.”

The night drew onwards, each of them lost in their own thoughts. Crowley’s thumb continued to trace gentle circles against Aziraphale’s skin. Cars still occasionally swept by outside, and a light spattering of rain began to fall.

Several minutes into this pondering, Aziraphale came up with an idea. It took him several minutes more to work up the courage to propose it.

“Crowley,” he began, trying to speak seriously without sounding too formal. “Remember when we were at Tadfield, at the air base, and I demanded you do something to stop what was happening, and you – well, you stopped time?”

The ginger head bobbed, golden eyes absently following the motions of his own thumb.

“Where were we, exactly, when you did that?”

“I’m not sure what it’s called,” Crowley said slowly. “I think I’ve always named it ‘The Sands of Time’ in my head, but I don’t think it’s anywhere, really. Sort of a... pocket dimension, I suppose.”

“And why did you take us there? Why didn’t you just freeze time around us, like you did in Paris?”

Now Crowley looked at him. “So the others couldn’t see us, get to us.” His mind wondered to distant thoughts of escape and safety, and his eyes glazed over. “It’s not a permanent solution, angel. We couldn’t really stay there for any length of time. Or, well, not time, because it doesn’t have any, that’s the whole point. But, y’know. I can’t hold it there forever.”

“I’m not asking you to. But I was just wondering, because...” Aziraphale lifted his free hand and moved it gently through the air as he spoke, softly punctuating his words. “Well, if you did it because you wanted to hide us, well then, no one can see us there. No one besides God, I mean. And, well, if we’re looking to communicate with Her without anyone else seeing, then perhaps... well, perhaps that’s the place to do it.”

The two looked at each other in the soft, cosy glow of the bookshop’s warm lighting.

“Maybe so,” Crowley said eventually. His thumb had stopped moving against Aziraphale’s hand.

“It’s just an idea, of course,” the angel said, gently pulling his hand away and dancing it through the air in front of him. “I don’t want to make you do anything difficult or dangerous for something we don’t even really need to know, but...”

“Even if it doesn’t work, it’s always nice to give the wings a stretch.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale breathed. “That too.”

The preparation felt strange, given that there hadn’t really been much of it last time. They made sure to close all of the blinds in the bookshop, just in case. They tried to figure out how far apart they should stand so that there would be room to stretch their wings straight away. They talked about how they were going to do it.

“What do we need to ask?”

“If we’re still connected, I suppose. She’ll know what we mean, probably better than we do.”

They looked at each other for a long moment.

“Angel, you do know that this probably won’t work?” He said it gently, with as much tenderness as he could muster. God, in Crowley’s experience, wasn’t the most receptive to questions, generally speaking. At least this time they weren’t questioning _Her_ , or really anything from a moral standpoint, but he still felt a response was unlikely.

“I know.”

The reply was wistful, and for a moment the two considered the same possibility – that this may be the last time either of them asked for guidance from God, ever referred to Her in any terms more than a passing reference, believed in Her as anything more than a neutral, distant onlooker, who cared nothing about the individuals and everything about the entertainment.

Aziraphale shook himself out of his thoughts. “Let’s do it.”

The pair separated, moving between bookshelves to get far enough apart that in the other place they would have the full range of movement for their wings. They had nothing with them, this time – no flaming sword, no sunglasses or parts of a burnt-up Bentley, no eleven-year-old antichrist who was so fundamentally human. It was just them, and base hope.

Crowley summoned all his strength, all the anger and fear and nervousness and _questions_ , and pushed it into the place inside him that he knew had the most power, the most capacity for miracles. Then he threw open his arms and opened up his heart, and catapulted the two of them into The Sands of Time.

There was nothing quite like the feeling of being able to stretch out wings that felt they had been trapped away for all of eternity. It had only been a few months since the last time, but they hadn’t been able to really enjoy it then, so now was the moment to feel it. Both of them had gone into this plane of existence with their eyes shut, and kept them that way for a while, revelling in just the sensation of being able to breathe fully, reach fully, stretch every fibre of this semi-earthly form.

Aziraphale could feel every feather shift against and apart from each other, a constant folding and unfolding as he brushed his wings through their full range of movement – high and low, forward and backward, and outwards, always outwards, always free.

Crowley opened his eyes first, ever on the lookout. His gold eyes focused, and he froze.

He froze, because for a second he couldn’t understand what he was looking at.

He froze, because for a moment he didn’t comprehend the being before him.

He froze, because for a fraction of the time that this place didn’t have, he was certain that God Herself was here, and had orchestrated this, and was smiling.

Because in front of him was Aziraphale, beautiful, kind Aziraphale, and his eyes were shut in the ecstasy of freedom, and his wings... oh Lord, his _wings_.

They were spread out wide, fluttering gently, and they were _gorgeous_.

Where before there had been feathers of pure white, shining brightly as his own had been so, so long ago, now there was colour. A soft cream, mottled with warm brown, and flecked with patches of brilliant sky blue. He had the colour scheme of his clothes, of a barn owl soaring through a clear spring sky, of everything comforting and friendly in his bookshop. His wings were stunning, and they were so fundamentally, purely, distinctly _Aziraphale_.

Then the soft eyes opened, and widened, and there was a gasp of captivated awe. “Oh, _Crowley_.”

Each had forgotten their own wings, but now Crowley looked up and brought them round and felt his mouth fall open further still. _His_ wings had changed too.

Aziraphale couldn’t help but stare. Crowley’s wings were still dark as night, but that night was no longer black and empty. It was _vast_ and _colourful_ and filled with every shade of darkness imaginable. There were reds, greens, purples, blues, every colour of the rainbow and more, an iridescence scattered amongst the deepest dark of the night sky, speckled over with tiny dots of pure white. They were incredible, an enchanting map of the nebulae Crowley had once built from nothing. They were _gorgeous_ and _perfect_ and so effortlessly distilled the essence of _Crowley_.

It was then that Aziraphale noticed his own wings, and the two of them stood in silent amazement at their transformations.

“Well, I suppose that answers that question,” the angel said weakly, after what could have been hours or years. But no, he wasn’t an angel anymore. He was something else, as his wings illustrated. They both were.

“But... how...” croaked out the no-longer-a-demon. “But it _hurt_ last time, it _burned_ , how could... how could we not know?”

“We didn’t Fall, my dear.” Aziraphale’s voice was gentle and sincere, and Crowley’s golden eyes latched onto his as an anchor in this world that made no sense. “What hurt was the Falling, and we didn’t. I think... I think we Flew.”

In an instant they were together again, their hands on each other’s shoulders, steadying themselves, holding each other up. Crowley looked so lost, so confused, and Aziraphale reached out, lifting a soft hand to cup his cheek instead, and those gorgeous golden eyes, irises expanded to overtake the whites, stared into Aziraphale’s soul.

“Why?”

The word fell from his lips like a child’s, a question millennia couldn’t answer. Aziraphale reached out his thumb to wipe away the unbidden tear that had escaped his best friend’s eye. Then he took a step to close the distance between them, and rested their foreheads together.

“Because we made our own side.”

***

They couldn’t stay forever, but they did stay longer. Eventually they broke apart and brushed through the colours of their own wings, learning their new patterns. And then they asked, haltingly, in reverent awe, to touch each other’s, and there was an eternity of bliss held in the sensation of those hands through his feathers, in the gentle way he murmured at their beauty.

They never prayed, in the end. They had gotten their answer. They were not of Heaven, nor of Hell, but were something new and entirely different. And it was a gift, they felt, one that should not be questioned, one that should be honoured. So in the end they left, went back to the bookshop, and were left breathless, laughter in their eyes, all joy and hope and pleasure, and the memory of the colours and textures of each other’s wings fresh in their minds.

Had they asked, there would have been no response. God does not get involved in answering prayers anymore, if She ever did. But had there been a response, it would have been this:

_Yes, you are on your own side now. You are something new._

_Yes, you are not connected to Hell or Heaven. They cannot monitor you now._

_Yes, you can still perform your miracles, but they do not come from either of those places, and they never did. They are from Me._

And perhaps they would have learnt something else, too. Perhaps they would have learnt that, in amongst the various seismic shifts that happened, one of them – the one that made their wings bright with the colours of their souls – had made sure their bodies were protected.

They would never dare to test it, but there was the possibility that, during their Flight, the primary weapons of Above and Below were muted. Perhaps Hellfire wouldn’t burn Aziraphale quite as thoroughly anymore. Perhaps Holy Water would cause Crowley only a slight stinging sensation. Perhaps Heaven and Hell’s fears of no destruction were now reality.

Perhaps, now, nothing on Earth or beyond it could tear their souls away from this place.

Or each other.


End file.
